When Does "White Bird: A Wonder Story" (2019) Take Place?

"White Bird" is a historical fiction graphic novel written by R. J. Palacio and released September 3rd, 2019. 

It takes place in the years: 

1940 AD - 1946 AD 

We know this because it depicts the effects on regular French citizens of the real-world occupation of France by Nazi German forces after the signing of the Second Armistice at Compiègne on June 22nd, 1940 AD up to the liberation of France in April of 1945 AD and even the problems after the end of World War II. 

Furthermore, many pages include time setting textbooks: the first reads "Summer 1940" and many follow that, bringing the reader through 1946 AD. 

Additionally, the story opens with a prologue and ends with an epilogue both set in "The present" that together make a frame narrative featuring Julian Albans and his grandmother. The epilogue depicts Grandmère Blum reading a newspaper with the headline "CHILDREN SEPARATED FROM PARENTS AS PART OF TRUMP'S 'ZERO TOLERANCE' POLICY". This was a common headline in June of 2018 AD when news broke that real-world United States of America President Donald Trump had expanded the narrow definition of human-trafficking alerts to effect a near total zero tolerance for illegal immigration policy that included indiscriminate separation of immigrant children from their families from May of 2017 AD to June of 2018 AD. There's also a time setting textbox partway through the epilogue reading "One Month Later" before the newspaper headline appears. So the prologue specifically takes place in May of 2018 AD and the epilogue primarily in June of 2018 AD. 

6.2018 - 1. = 5.2018. 

It is the first chronological graphic novel in the "Wonder" series. It can be read at its timeline point, after the novel “Wonder” (2012) at the timeline point of its framing prologue and epilogue, or entirely separately. 

It was adapted to prose in 2023 and then to film in 2024.